Arizona has a rich Native American history and culture, and is home to the third-largest population of Native Americans at about 296,732 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010) with a total of 22 tribal nations [1,2,3]. In grades 3 to 12, Native American (NA) students comprised approximately 5% of the total student enrollment at Arizona public schools in FY17 [3]. Maricopa County, where ASU is located, has the largest number of grade 3 to 12 NA students in Arizona. Therefore, Yang tries to pass intuitive information to young native americans for them to understand engineering, artificial intelligence, and the relationship to their culture. The goal is to get them excited about technology for their career.
Arizona has a fast-growing population. Such a fact makes the "Valley of the Sun" prosperous. However, the young population needs to be trained innovatively in engineering, so that the information technology-based industry can be competitive to the other areas that have better resources than what we have in Arizona. Therefore, Yang has been eagle in engaging high school students from different channels to encourage them to select engineering, power engineering, and artificial intelligence in power engineering. During these interactions, motivation is the key to the high-school level. To motivate students for active thinking, Yang typically lets the students see a product and feel the needs before starting the vivid explanation on the slides. In slides, he keeps a straight forward logic on what the challenges are, what makes us ready today to solve the problem, and how to start from a toy example.
In addition to the tutorials provided to NA students, the PI volunteered for an NSF Project (#0812121) on Engineering Research Center for Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems. The summer program is for high school students that shown interest in power systems. The goal of this outreach is to use various tools to show the students (1) what the interesting parts of a power system are, (2) Why such a field can lead to the excellence of their careers, and (3) what are the potential job opportunities for this field. In the program, schoolers interact with Yang on the three topics above and we run various simulations on their computers in front of them. It is great to see that approximately 20% of the students were female.
Yang also works on disseminate knowledge on the integration of renewable energy in developing countries. For example, Yang is a core member of a partnership between Arizona State University and two leading Pakistani universities: the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) and the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Peshawar, to focus on applied research relevant to Pakistan’s energy needs and help produce skilled graduates in the energy field. He hosted more than 10 students between 2017 and 2019.
